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Saturday, 5 November 2016

How many Citadel miniatures appeared on the front cover of Warhammer Fantasy Battle Third Edition?

Hello all. I have been struggling a bit this week thanks to my recently diagnosed hernia. Sitting for long periods really puts pressure on my abdominal wall so spending any length of time painting (or typing) is out of the window. Instead, I am taking the 'little-and-often' approach and my speed panting style really helps as I can finish a figure pretty quickly once the preparation is complete.

Needing something simple to work on, I opted for this little chap, or should I say chaps? This unpleasant fellow is one of the Perry chaos goblins from the mid '80s and goes by the name of 'The Twins'.

He was really simple to paint up. I undercoated in white as usual, then base coated green for the flesh, chainmail for the armour and brown for the club. One dark brown ink was applied to the whole model and once dry, a second black wash was added to the chainmail and the joins between objects. I just highlight up from the washes before picking out the eyes, lips and nose ring.

It was at this point that it dawned on me that this little blighter was on the cover of my beloved Warhammer Fantasy Battle Third Edition, being smited by the Warhammer Warrior. It may surprise you, but I have never before considered that the artwork on the cover of the famous rulebook may have been inspired by real models and the revelation was stark. I scurried off to explore my collection of models to see if any other examples from this painting were readily available to me. I found I also had Daethskar (the golden looking chap just to the right of the Warhammer graphic) but he was in poor condition.

Having now re-attached Daethskar's axe and re-positioned his helmet, I just need to do a little bit of green stuffing to prepare him for painting. I had a quick peruse of Sodemons to ascertain if I could discover any other figures in the older preslotta ranges that matched with the artwork.

Here is what I found.

A chaos wizard matching the purple robed sorcerer.

Another one of the chaos goblins with the long neck - no arrow through it though!

Having tracked down these four models I was wondering if any collectors out there in the blogosphere could tell me if any further models match the characters shown in the illustration.